1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to method and system for managing subscriber access to online subscription services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and similar printed media have been available by mail and other delivery systems for many years. With the surge in possession of personal computers, both in the home and in the work place, many providers of traditional printed media subscriptions now offer online subscriptions for their products. Online subscriptions are currently offered not only for the traditional subscription media such as newspapers, popular magazines, and trade journals but also for non-traditional media such as entertainment sites and informational sources including encyclopedias and databases of interest to different business and technology sectors.
When a subscription for traditional printed media expires or is nearing expiration, subscription providers normally mail a reminder to the subscriber, usually with an enticement to encourage renewal, and hope that the subscriber will renew the subscription. When the subscription expires, however, the subscription provider must, to remain profitable, remove the subscriber from the subscription mailing list until the subscriber requests a renewal. Due to the high cost of printing, handling and delivering the printed media, subscription providers usually have no choice but to stop subscription delivery after the subscription period expires. The subscription provider must then rely on mail solicitations, which are often discarded unopened, and other mass media advertising to entice the subscriber to again subscribe to the publication.
For almost all products, a successful marketing campaign is required to attract new customers and retain old ones. A common method of attracting new subscribers used by printed media subscription providers is to offer a free copy or a short trial subscription of the printed media to induce the potential subscriber to acquire a full subscription. However, these offers must also be for only a relatively few copies of the printed media due to the high cost of printing, handling and delivering the printed media.
Online subscription providers deliver the same subscription content to online subscribers without the subscription content first being reduced to a paper format, then mass produced on printing presses, and then processed through a massive delivery system, typically involving warehouses, trucks, rail, and other transportation means, including the mail system. Online subscriptions are delivered over the Internet to online subscribers who connect, with a browser, to a subscription server that downloads the subscription content to the online subscriber. The files downloaded from the subscription server contain all the information, in computer readable format, for the words, pictures, colors of the presentation, sound and presentation layouts required by the online subscriber's computer to display the same subscription content.
Because special editions are so inefficient to produce, it is a practical necessity to adopt an all or nothing approach to delivering printed media subscriptions to a particular subscriber. To vary the content of a printed media subscription requires separate press runs for each separate edition of the printed media. Producing separate editions becomes especially difficult with the problems associated with identifying, shipping and delivering these varying subscription editions to various subscribers.
Therefore, there is a need to entice subscribers of online subscriptions to renew expired subscriptions not constrained by the usual methods used for printed media. There is a further need to develop methods to generate new subscriptions for new subscribers without the constraints of the printed media.